


Washed out Embers.

by fearless_seas



Series: The Three Trials of Jacky Ickx. [2]
Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: Goodbyes, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Memories, Minor Character Death, Not Actually Unrequited Love, POV First Person, Regret
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-05
Updated: 2018-06-05
Packaged: 2019-05-18 16:15:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14856011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fearless_seas/pseuds/fearless_seas
Summary: I do not know how to explain it. That I loved you? It would come as a surprise because every moment I’ve enjoyed to show overwise.





	Washed out Embers.

**Author's Note:**

> I just loved this series too much I decided to write something from the perspective of each of the people Jacky loved. Starting of course with Jochen.

**\----- To Ickx -----**

 

          I do not know how to explain it. That I loved you? It would come as a surprise because every moment I’ve enjoyed to show overwise. No. It was something far different. The thought of you makes me shake my head, perhaps the corner of my lips will turn up ever so slightly as if didn’t belong there. This that I felt, it was just the same. Strong and the timing was all wrong, so in a way, it was the feelings that decided that we didn’t belong. Fresh-faced, your dark curls were polished across the top of your forehead like a movie star and you liked to smile a lot. That was the first thing I noticed about you. I studied you from the corner of my eye from across the lot as you ran a curious finger over the length of your single-seater vehicle. You couldn’t of been more than seventeen, I thought, surprised later to find out you were actually twenty-two.

          Watching you, following you and your grin made me do the same quietly to myself. I knew that a smile like that could change someone’s life. Maybe I was right. Your soft features were like carefully sculpted artistry from the most delicate brushes and the gentle blush of your cheeks as you stepped into the cockpit made me snap my goggles over my eyes and choose to forget you for a moment. Forget what exactly? I don’t know. I’m saying that a lot, but it is true. I’ll never fully be sure of the effect you had on me. My hands tightened on the steering wheel and I can feel your excitement from several grid rows behind.

 _Let the kid show how he does in his first grand prix_.

          There was a collision on lap one, wasn’t there? It was raining that day and my eyes blinked to the sky as ashen clouds teased more poor weather. It was already tense as Jim Clark spun out right before my eyes into a ditch. We all kept going after he waved his arm in the air to signal everything was alright. None of us were worrying about that, we only were pondering solely of ourselves, our races and controlling the slipping tires from the end of the track. I didn’t see it, not at all, but I saw them pull John Taylor out of his burning wreck. For an instant I saw you lax in the seat in front with several men rushing to undo your belts. Believe me: I contemplated it for a minute. I truly thought to retire the car because what was one race versus your life? It changes a man; and it did change you. It’s only you who has changed and everything else is the same as before. That is the hardest part. Your first race and maybe I was the only one who saw the true radiance of your expression.

          I never saw you smile like that again.  

          I finished third, came to the garage after the podium and you’re sitting there on the other end alone. It was so strange, to once witness features that contained so much life, so much light, become dimmed by experience. I come closer and just inching there I can sense it: the deviation in how slowly you rub your eyes, the loss of energy in your tone and I realize then and there that you are never coming back. You are on the ground with your back to the wall and your eyes blankly staring off towards the track. Your face is pallid and without countenance so I stand over you for a second. I know that you see I am there, my presence is arriving for you, but you don’t do anything about it.

          You only rest there with your hands folded and your elbows arched on your knees. I find it remarkable, the way you alter me without touching me at all. It begins to rain again and you stay there just the same, blinking as drops fall over your hooded lashes, your hair is matted to your forehead and your racing uniform is soaked to your skin. I don’t say anything but I do sit next to you. Our shoulders are touching and your neck is bent downwards. I cannot tell if you are crying but your body is shaking, trembling against mine.

          I don’t say anything.

          But I wanted to.

          I could’ve said: _“It is not what we say that keeps us up at night, but the things we didn’t say.”_

          I didn’t.

          I should’ve.

          Eventually you come to your senses, and I put a hand on your shoulder as if in some stupid way it may help. You shook me off without even looking at me. I can hear you throwing things around in the garage after you leave and the sounds, the words that escape your tongue you make my chest tighten. Please believe when I say I yearned to go in and stop you, that I would’ve held you when no one else did. I’m better off without you, but you are a little piece of me that just won’t let go. I want you to know that, Jacky.

          Four weeks later when John Taylor dies you come to the paddock and nobody notices the bandage you have wrapped over your palm. I do. I want to ask you: _“Oh, Jacky, what did you do to yourself?”_

          At your second grand prix your simper is rare. In the next seasons to come it stays just the same. Your delivery has been muted. You are twenty-two when your first emotional wrinkle appears right at the crease of your mouth. How strange that we live in a universe, and in bodies, that punishes us for our emotions. I recall then that I cannot blame you for walking away if I did nothing to make you stay. You were going to be big, the real deal. Even if you never won a championship: you were always real to me. Bruises are tender but they do not last. I enjoy speaking with you over the next years in the few undocumented moments we get together.

          The time I have my glasses on and you’re in the driver’s seat rounding the track with the same silk and confidence I saw years ago. It’s you, postulated there with the wind coming through your locks and exuding a soft, but rough charm. You flirt with everyone and you never realize it. Your lips play as though sprinkles of golden dust frame your mouth; I would’ve loved to find out if this was true. You shine like a star does just before it flickers and dies out. Like the clouds, it was as though you were preparing to fall obscure and heavy like rain. It’s you, making sense when no one in the world does. Despite this I never understand you.

          If I ever offended you it was not my intention.

          You’ll never admit it but you think of John a lot even though you never even knew him. That is what makes it painful, John ran into the back of your car and caught fire: simple as that. But that man died and that makes all the difference. Silently you blame yourself and I want to rub my fingers over your eyelids to interrupt the memories that filter behind them every time you close your eyes. You look confused more than anything when Jim dies. We all are asking ourselves: _how did it happen to Jimmy?_ The most painful thing is that we’ll never know. We will never understand why he died. If you are not a driver, one will not understand.

          They won’t comprehend that after a while we cannot allow ourselves to be affected by these things. You get back in your car and continue driving after Gerhard dies, someone you’ve known for years. Gone. We await the next person, the succeeding one, another death and we mourn each other before we are even dead. The horror of it is that we stay attracted to things that hurt us; to things that will kill us. We feel death close enough that it destroys us, near that it defines us and we sense increasing cold in result. We live and die for what we love; that is the way it has always been.

          Jackie Stewart asked me something once during the 1970 season. The infamous season where you commanded my attention throughout the whole months. “You seem to have fun with Ickx, you have a curious way of looking at him,” they were staring at me through their sunglasses. I had to think fast with the way he is scrutinizing me as if he can read my every thoughts. The longer I postpone words, the more information he gets. It was safe to say they were slightly nosy, always getting into things they had no business being in. But because they are my friend I indulge them.

          I took the cigarette out of my mouth, puffing out a cloud of smoke into the air towards them. “If there is one person I wouldn’t want to win it is Jacky Ickx,” I added a little humor at the end of it to let Jackie know that I was just playing. Of course I wouldn’t want you to win, especially when I am leading the championship. _Give me 1970_ , I silently beg you, _I will help you win anything more you want_.

          Jackie has too many friends, not just me, because the next thing I know the whole paddock is talking of a rivalry between us. That I once said you were the only driver I didn’t like. This is not true. It is too late because the media gets a handle on the story. Suddenly you can barely look at me anymore. How can I blame you? The adoration I own for your smile is still there and you’ve aged. You’re less naive (you never were exactly) but you are older, wiser. You appear just the same, still youthful, oh so beautiful in a way no other man is. Never again do you mention what happened that first interaction in the rain and I can almost convince myself that you forgot about it. But there is silent gratitude or guilt swimming about in your expressional eyes when you glance at me.

          Perhaps we want happiness but desire to keep pain close. Everyone once a while you have to allow yourself to break apart because if you don’t, eventually it will all come at once. It will ruin you like nothing else. Nothing else in the world will make you feel more agony. You put everything that pains you a box and put it to the back of your ribs where it is guarded from ever being known or understood.

         I remember when Jackie Oliver crashed into you. I could only drive by as the flames enveloped your car and I no longer saw you struggling. I spit at their feet when the race was over. I shouldn't of done that but the anger was just enough because I thought that you were dead. Loud noises used to scare me as a child and now the snapping start of a engine brings me to life. Something about the roar soothes me. I wait all night for them to declare you dead, for them to play the Belgian anthem and everyone to get back in their car the next day as if you'd never existed. The fireproof suits work for ten seconds and you were stuck in the burning inferno for twenty.

         It is embarrassing but when Graham called to tell me that you were alive (badly burnt, but still breathing), I slammed down the phone and started crying. There is an entity within you, like a thousand year old flame being kindled under your skin, one that never goes out even if you are gone. You came back to racing seventeen days later, a miracle I'd say. I began to look at you longer now, as if every time that I saw you was the last time. It could've been. 

          Piers’s death hit me harder than most. He was too kind, so gentle. That is why it hurts: he never did a thing wrong. None of us did. Every time I caught your eye, you turned away because you know you had no business speaking with someone you hated you. You cared about me, you’ll never show it or tell anyone but finding out someone you cared about doesn’t like you is an emotional blow. I am not mad at you, I just understand. I only wish you had let me explain that I never meant to hurt you.

          I won at Hockenheim and in a gesture of good humor, or maybe a truce, I handed you my trophy. It was sloshing with champagne and you were surprised by the weight. But you hesitated before taking it, as if just the tips of my fingers brushing your hands were filled with poison. You sipped from it and a reporter snapped a photo. You keep that photo privately in your luggage, cut out from a magazine article about our "rivalry" because you treasure the beauty of the simple moment among such chaos. It is a good photo, magic visible in how your eyes meet mine and we allow ourselves to grin. In that occasion I saw you Jacky, not what you’ve built yourself to be in the eyes of everyone else, but the real you. Your real smile, the one that reaches your eyes and your gentle touch caressing my shoulder in a congratulatory message. The pain reaches your eyes second later when I witness you remembering: _this man hates me_. You draw away and I only observe you leaving. It was my chance, my one to stop you, to grab your wrist and pull you closer, tell you the truth; but I didn’t. I let you continue thinking that I hated you.

          I didn’t, Jacky.

          I hope you find that out someday.

          I never once hated you.

          “ _I care about you,_ ” your eyes say every time they casually meet mine, “ _But I can’t._ ”

          “ _Why?_ ”, I question and the coffee tone there is so abyssal, so deep as if there is a whole galaxy to explore within you.

          “ _Because we are going to ruin each other._ ”

          We cling to music, to poetry or writing and dance because we are in a constant attempt to make ourselves feel a little less alone. We want to find something or someone that can explain the things that we cannot. I can’t explain why you approached me before qualifying at Monza. Like otherworldly forces magnetizing us together. You put out your hand, peered up at me and I could read the mood of your face like nothing else. I didn’t want to accept it at the time but I knew it. I understood it when our hands met and your fingers curled through mine. My hand was there saying things that my lips never could. It was saying goodbye. I was saying goodbye. To you.

          I wonder if you knew that when you marched away from me and I felt slightly cold. I pray that you presumed that I was saying that, that I was whispering a farewell to you. You are a wildflower in a storm, imperfect, unstable and clean but glistening. A gift, _good god_ , a gift. I was just the wind on your petals: there one moment and gone the next. The more I came to know you, the less of you I knew.

          I find after I am gone that you have a lot more pain to endure in years to come.

          I never hated you; and you will not ever know that.

          It will be my biggest mistake that I didn't tell you how you managed to carve yourself into my veins.

          I hope you think of me everytime it rains. 

         I always did when I was still around. 

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed please comment, it motivates me to write. No matter how many times I put that though I get maybe one comment so we'll see, ha. Anyways thanks for reading. Tumblrs are @sonofhistory and @pieregasly
> 
> NOTES:  
> \- Jacky Ickx's first race in F1 was with a F2 car at the Nurburgring track in Germany. He qualified 16th. On the first lap John Taylor hit the back of his car, crashed and caught fire. He died a month later.  
> \- Jim Clark died in 1968 in a F2 crash.  
> \- Jackie Stewart stated the only driver that Jochen Rindt didn't like was Jacky Ickx and I personally don't believe that because they were in a lot of photos and videos together that shows good relations between them.  
> \- The 1970 season was a battle between Jacky and Jochen.  
> \- Gerhard Mitte was an F2 driver Jacky Ickx was friends with, he died in 1969.  
> \- Piers Courage was a good friends of Jackie Stewart and Jochen Rindt, he died in 1970.  
> \- After the Hockenheim race that Jochen won, he passed his trophy of champagne to Jacky who drank from it. There is a rad photo someone snapped.  
> \- Jochen died at Monza during qualifying in 1970.


End file.
